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☆ Amazon, Meta back Scale AI in $1 billion funding deal that values firm at $14 billion
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-21 | by ( Riley De León | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Artificial intelligence startup Scale AI said Tuesday that it has raised $1 billion in a Series F funding round that values the enterprise tech company at $13.8 billion — almost double its last reported valuation. 12 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised $1.6 billion to date. Existing investors including Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, Nvidia, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management also participated in the round. Scale AI is playing a key role in the rise of generative artificial intelligence and large language models, with the data — whether it is text, images, video or voice recordings — needing to be labeled correctly before it can be digested and used effectively by AI technology. Scale AI has evolved from labeling data used to train models that powered autonomous driving to now helping to improve and fine tune the underlying data for nearly any organization looking to implement AI, powering some of the most advanced models in use.

Persons: Elad Gil, Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Alexandr Wang Organizations: CNBC, Accel, Cisco Investments, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Color Genomics, Meta, Ventures, Founders Fund, Spark Capital, Nvidia, Tiger Global Management, Wellington Management Locations: San Francisco, AGI

☆ Missed Nvidia? Fund manager says this under-the-radar network stock is set for an AI boost
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Amala Balakrishner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

One firm that's perhaps lesser known stands out to portfolio manager Sanjay Ayer, however: Arista Networks — the U.S. cloud-computing and networking equipment company. The social media giant's cautious guidance put pressure on Arista's shares, but the stock remains up around 40% year-to-date. But he added: "Arista is embedded at these companies. They're not [just] an outsourced manufacturer or hardware product provider – they're [also] a research and development partner and they are helping to shape the roadmaps of these companies' networking needs." For Ayer, the company's "customer-centric culture," where its network operators are all trained software engineers, makes it a good investment.

Persons: Sanjay Ayer, Ayer, —, They're Organizations: Nvidia, Baidu, Arista Networks, Arista, U.S, WCM Investment Management, CNBC Pro, Meta, Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft, Ayer, Equity Fund Locations: U.S, Ayer

☆ AI, weight loss drugs and more: Portfolio manager names stocks to play 'new secular growth themes'
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Amala Balakrishner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

And then you overlay on top of that the emergence of two or three brand new secular growth themes," he said. CNBC Pro takes a look at the stocks he likes in three "brand new" areas of growth: obesity drugs, reshoring and artificial intelligence. Reshoring infrastructure Ayer sees bright spots in the reshoring theme too. The portfolio manager named tech giant Amazon as a good play of the AI wave. The way Ayer sees it, more companies in the U.S. are foraying into AI right now, compared to those in other parts of the world.

Persons: Sanjay Ayer, Ayer, He's bullish, —, Christina Cheddar Berk, Carmen Reinicke, Julie Coleman Organizations: CNBC Pro, WCM Investment Management, Equity Fund, Nordisk, Novo Nordisk, U.S . Food, Drug Administration, Tetra Tech, Canadian, Canadian Pacific, U.S Locations: U.S, China, Japan, India

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